Amritsar Gets Award For Most Polluted City in India

Amritsar has ranked 430 out of 476 of the cleanest cities of India. The low ranking of Amritsar has caused protests in Amritsar on the lack of cooperation and funding on part of the government.

Amritsar: Rank 430

Around 1,800 sanitation workers have 35 hoes and no baskets to collect 700 tonnes of waste per day in Amritsar.

A solid waste management project has been stuck for the last six years due to the lack of political will to make it a reality. According to the Kishore Kumar, store keeper of the Amritsar Municipal Corporation, the civic body used 500 litres of Phenyl and the same quantity of acid to keep its toilets clean over the last two years. “We do not even have tools to collect the waste.

How can you keep the city clean without basic tools to clean it,” asks Safai Mazdoor Union President Vinod Bitta. “Around 500 posts of sanitation workers are vacant and 500 more new posts are required.

Nearly Rs 5 crore is being paid annually to contractors to hire 65 tractor-trolleys to collect waste from the city even though the MC could have brought its own fleet of tractor-trolleys with the same amount.

This is mismanagement,” he alleged. While Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal paid a visit to the site of the proposed solid waste management plant at Bhagttan on Sunday and assured that the plant would be a reality soon, residents are familiar with such claims as the same promises have been made since 2009, when then MP Navjot Singh Sidhu first mooted the idea.